CHAP. Obscure Chancellors after Becket. Chancellor A. D. 1173. CHAPTER IV. CHANCELLORS FROM THE RESIGNATION OF THOMAS à BECKET THE history of the Great Seal during the reign of Henry II. is left in a state of great uncertainty from the time when it was resigned in 1162 by Thomas à Becket till it was delivered in 1181 to Geoffrey Plantagenet, the King's natural son. In this interval there were very powerful chief justiciaries, Richard de Luci, and Robert Earl of Leicester; and they probably rendered the office of Chancellor for the time of little consequence. However, we find the names of several who are said to have held it. First, "JOANNES Cancellarius*" occurs; but of this John we know not the surname, nor what other dignity he ever attained. Next comes RODOLPHUS de Warnavilla, of whom we only know that when he was appointed he was archdeacon of Rohan. † The third is WALTER de Constantiis, who was made Bishop of Ely. Although the last is supposed to have been at one time Chancellor to the King, it would appear that in the year 1175 he only held the Great Seal as a deputy, if we may judge from the account given us by Hoveden of an embassy to the Earl of Flanders, in which he was joined with the famous Ranulphus de Glanvil, afterwards Chief Justiciary, and the earliest writer on the Law of England. On this occasion he is described as "Vice-cancellarius." What share any of these Chancellors had in the stirring events of the time, the framing of the Constitutions of Clarendon, the deadly controversy with Becket,-the conquest of Ireland, -the war with Scotland,—the feudal * Spel. Gloss. 109. + Ib. Or. Jur. 3. Et ad audiendum inde responsum comitis (Flandriæ) misit Walterum de Constantiis, VICE-CANCELLARIUM suum et Ranulphum de Glanvilla. Hoveden, P. ii. p. 561. n. 10. IV. subjection of that country on the capture of William the Scot- CHAP. tish King, and the continued disputes and wars between Henry and his sons, we shall never learn. It is the fashion of historians down to a much later era, to ascribe all the acts of government, even those connected with legislation and domestic administration, to the autocracy of the nominal chief of the state; but the most active sovereign could only in general have the merit of selecting good counsellors and taking good advice; and if our sovereigns would sometimes lose credit, they might as often be relieved from obloquy, by a disclosure of the share which each minister had in the measures of their reign. PLANTAGENET, tion. We now come to another Chancellor, whose origin, career, GEOFFREY and character are well known to history. In the year 1181 Henry delivered the Great Seal to GEOFFREY, his son by Chancellor. the fair Rosamond. * Of all his progeny, legitimate or illegitimate, this was his favourite. The boy was tenderly reared His birth at Court, and as he displayed lively parts, great pains were and educataken with his education. He could not have a regular appanage, as if he had been a son of the Queen, but it was thought that an ample provision might be made for him in the Church. While yet a youth he was appointed archdeacon A bishop. of Lincoln, and while in the 20th year of his age, by royal mandate he was elected bishop of that see. For a considerable time, under favour of a papal dispensation, he enjoyed the temporalities, without having been consecrated bishop, or even admitted into holy orders. A rebellion breaking out in 1174, he raised a large military force, took several castles, displayed great personal prowess, and was of essential service in reducing the insurgent Barons to subjection. ploits. When Henry was raising an army to repel an invasion of His milithe Scots, Geoffrey joined him, and brought, under his own try exbanner, 140 knights raised in his bishopric, with many more men-at-arms, well mounted and accoutred. The King received him with much joy, and said in the hearing of a great multitude of persons who were present at their meeting,"My other sons, by their conduct, have proved themselves Orig. Jur. 1. Spel. Gloss. 109. CHAP. bastards, but this alone has shown himself to be really my true and legitimate son." IV. Receives Though as a soldier Geoffrey obtained great reputation, he was very deficient in his duty as a churchman, and after being seven years a bishop, he still refused to become a priest. At last, in the year 1181, Pope Alexander III. sent a mandate to Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, requiring the Primate to compel him by ecclesiastical censures no longer to defer what could not without scandal be any longer dispensed with, or to renounce his election to the bishopric of Lincoln. The slender restraints then imposed on ecclesiastical dignitaries weighed with him little, but to priestly tonsure and tunics he would not submit; and as in spite of all remonstrance he persisted in sincerely saying, "Nolo episcopari,"-so the see was declared vacant and bestowed on another. This was not from any levity of character or love of idleness, for Geoffrey had applied himself diligently to study, and had made considerable progress in the civil and canon law. By way of indemnity Great Seal. for his loss, the office of Chancellor was conferred upon him. Even in those days such an appointment must have been Chancellor, considered a very glaring job, the young man notwithstanding his talents and acquirements, being entirely without experience, and the custody of the Great Seal having important judicial duties annexed to it. Nevertheless, he is said to have dedicated himself to business in a very exemplary manner, and to have given considerable satisfaction to the public. His conduct as A doubt exists how long he remained in the office. Some accounts represent him as holding it during the remaining eight years of his father's reign*, while there are notices of three others having during this interval been in possession of the Great Seal,-NIGEL, Bishop of Ely †, WALTER de Bidun‡, and the before-mentioned WALTER de Constantiis. Perhaps the authorities may be reconciled by supposing that these merely assisted as Vice chancellors, while Geoffrey remained Chancellor, enjoying the dignity and emoluments of the office This opinion is espoused by Lord Lyttelton in his History of Henry II. † Cart. 5 Ed. 3. m. l. Lel. Coll. vol. i. p. 38. IV. till his father's death. Ranulphus de Glanvil was now Chief CHAP. Justiciary, and he must have thrown into the shade all others connected with the administration of the law. A skilful military commander, he quelled a dangerous rebellion and gained a great victory over the Scots, taking their King prisoner; he presided with distinguished lustre in the Aula Regia; and he wrote a book on the law and constitution of England, which is now read by all who wish to acquire a critical knowledge of them as they stood in the first century after the Conquest, before they were modified by the great charter of King John.* Whatever might be the qualifications of Geoffrey Plan- His filial tagenet for his office of Chancellor, all authors are loud in his piety. praise for his steady fidelity and attachment to his father, while his brothers were constantly thwarting and annoying him, and were often in arms against him. In 1189, near the close of this reign, the pious Chancellor fought valiantly by his father's side in a hard-contested battle near Frenelles in Normandy, and the English army being obliged to retreat in some disorder, he offered to keep watch at an outpost, fatigued and spent as he was, while his father should enjoy some repose; but Henry would not suffer him to be his guard with so much danger to himself. Soon after, hearing of his father's dangerous illness at Chinon, he hastened thither, and finding him so much oppressed by fever that he could not sit up in his bed, he gently raised his head and supported it on his own bosom. Henry fetched a deep sigh, and turning his languid eyes upon him, said:-"My dearest son, as you have in all changes of fortune behaved yourself most dutifully and affectionately to me, doing all that the best of sons could do, so will I if the Glanvil not having been Chancellor, I do not feel myself at liberty to give any detailed account of his life; but I may be excused transcribing in a note a character of him to be found in the preface to the eighth part of Lord Coke's reports. "Et nota quod præfatus Ranulph' de Glanvilla fuit vir præclarissimus genere utpote de nobile sanguine, vir insuper strenuissimus corpore, qui provectiori ætate ad Terram Sanctam properavit et ibidem contra inamicos crucis Christi strenuissime usque ad necem dimicavit." Coke seems to envy the glory of the crusader; for though he himself had "written learnedly and profoundly," his own exploits as ex-chief justice when sheriff of Buckinghamshire, could not compare with those of ex-chief justice Glanvil. CHAP. IV. State of law during Henry II. reign of mercy The King with his last breath expressed a wish that this pious son should be provided for by his successor,—a wish that was held sacred by the penitent Richard. Geoffrey, dutiful to the last, attended the corpse to the nunnery of Fontevrault,-where blood running from its mouth at the approach of Richard, that generous though violent spirit, in a fit of remorse, reproached himself as the murderer of his father. During the latter part of the reign of Henry II., while his son Geoffrey was Chancellor, all things being reduced to peace, our legal polity is supposed to have made greater advances than it had done from the Conquest downwards. The great regularity in the order of proceeding, and the refinement with which questions respecting property were treated, show that if the age was barbarous, it produced individuals of enlarged minds and well skilled in the principles of jurisprudence. Very able men followed as Chancellors in the succeeding reigns, but from foreign war and domestic strife little improvement was effected by any of them for near a century afterwards. Although there be as yet no traces of the Chancellor having a separate court of his own, either for common law or equitable jurisdiction, it is certain that in the time of Henry II. he was looked up to as a high judicial authority, and he occasionally went the circuit as a justice in eyre or of assize. * Mad. Ex. p. 61. See Lord Lyttelton's Hist. iii. 479. 4 Inst. 159. |